Kesten Garess circled the ditch and palisade around the militia's camp on the north bank of the Gudrin, opposite Shambling Steps, now a ghost village only used by him and his troops as their headquarters. The camp was built around the north endpoint of the ferry, still operational across the river, mostly carrying militiamen on monster-hunting business. Anyway, it was crucial not to let it fall into the hands of goblins.

  He was eyeing the goblins' makeshift fort that had practically sprouted from the ground overnight, its dimensions about the size of a larger human village, its walls just as smelly as its inhabitants. They probably used dung as building material.

  Guelder, if she ever showed up in response to his message by raven, would not be happy that he'd processed an entire copse of trees for camp fortifications, but so be it. He was very much done caring whether the baroness would be upset or not. Ever since he'd been camping here with his men, the goblins had set fire to the palisade twice in a row. He had to patch it up somehow. Also, his men were happy to have a break in fighting and do some logging or construction work instead. They were not keen on assaulting the goblin fort, and Kesten couldn't blame them for that. Those little pests had all kinds of stink traps, a budding industry of alchemy (or maybe they had just robbed a lonely scientist for supplies), a few monsters they kept for sustenance and occasionally weaponised, and an unusually powerful shaman who sometimes appeared on the wall with his frostwolf familiar and yelled obscenities at the militia in a peculiar dialect of Common. Sadly, they also had human captives: stragglers left behind by the military during the evacuation, poachers and fishermen venturing back to the Gudrin for livelihood, and the like. Three of them had managed to escape just recently, and now they were telling their horror stories in his camp to anyone willing to listen.

  Kesten was starting to think it had been a mistake to call Guelder here. It was tantamount to admitting to his own helplessness before a bunch of tiny low-lifes. He'd believed he was forging the militia into a real taskforce – or at least the part of it that hadn't fallen to the monsters in their first live action. Survival of the fittest, as the baroness would say. The army wasn't doing much in terms of monster-hunting, too busy guarding the borders from greedy neighbours eager to fish in the muddy water that was Nightvale nowadays, or chasing desperate emigrants back to their assigned dwelling-places. It would have been so glorious if the militia could hold the line against the monsters all by itself, without the involvement of those rangers from the Embeth Forest and the mercenaries hired from Varnhold. But alas, that was still a long way away.

  And Kesten's time was running out. He had to make his move before the baroness would mess up her mission beyond repair.

  Last year, after Tartuccio had shown his true colours (and also his disinterest in toppling the Stag Lord), Kesten had decided to give a chance to Guelder. She had seemed quite efficient in disposing of the bandit lord as well as of the treacherous Pitaxian gnome. Jhod Kavken had quickly grown fond of her despite her curse, which had to mean something, and even Valerie, with her unquestionable morality, had accepted her leadership with little to no misgivings. But Lady Jamandi Aldori was not the most important person in Restov due to her naive and trustful nature. The Stolen Lands were far too precious to be wasted upon someone unworthy. Jamandi had had a Plan B all along, and that plan rested upon the shoulders of her guard captain, Kesten Garess. Under the pretext of helping to found the barony, he had been tasked with keeping a watchful eye on Guelder, constantly monitoring her progress, her attitude, her behaviour, and if she strayed too far off the path, he was supposed to step up and wrest the helm of the state from her claws. Kesten had never thought this would ever prove necessary.

  Until now.

  Of course, the signs had been there early on, but he'd been reluctant to take notice. In the wake of the Enneo affair, there had been gossip that Guelder was secretly a member of some dark cult or another, either an apostate or an active cultist on the run. The fact that Jaethal had started to treat her as a stepdaughter or whatnot hadn't helped, either. Not that the baroness couldn't use some coaching in politics and rulership, but the situation still felt a little unnerving, even if it was 99% certain that Guelder was not an Urgathoan. She was completely devoid of any hedonistic trait or any aspiration to extend her lifespan beyond its natural limits (although, being an elf, she had plenty of time ahead to begin with). So Kesten stood aloof from the gossip, and even reproached those who happened to question Guelder's moral integrity based on her lack of interest in religious matters.

  Then the crackdown on the cult of Lamashtu had changed everything. On that night, the slivers of the big picture had assembled into a whole, and Kesten didn't like what he saw.

  The ritual in the shrine and the subsequent encounter with the cult's hideous priestess had brought Guelder's hidden personality to the surface. Apart from a feeble attempt to silence Tsanna, the baroness hadn't even attempted to refute the priestess's allegations that she and even her (ostensibly unknown) parents belonged to the cult. She'd given free rein to her inner sexual predator, hitherto buried behind a mask of chastity, so deep that only Valerie had the discernment to suspect its existence. (The walls in Dumra's lodge were deplorably thin, supplying Kesten with more knowledge than he'd cared for, even though Hazel was unusually tight-lipped about what had transpired between them and the baroness.) Then she'd visited the accursed shrine for another nighttime ritual and returned with a bloodied body and a disturbed mind. Without doubt, she'd repented and wiggled her way back into Lamashtu's embrace. It was just a matter of time until she'd forget about her leash and medication on full moon nights for the greater glory of the Mother of Monsters.

  This was not what Lady Jamandi needed as support for her claim of independence.

  The sound of a bugle startled him out of his musings. Five blasts. Why? They didn't even have a signal of five... Then, as he saw the green pests flood out of their stronghold, it started to make sense. Three blasts for goblins, and two... Oh, no. Guelder would arrive just in time to see him humiliated again. He couldn't let that happen.

  Kesten stood at the gate of the camp and began to shout his orders:

  "To arms, everyone! Goblins incoming! Allen, Sergei, Cian, Fil, Joos, with me! The others, defend the camp! Let's show them what we're made of!"

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  As a quick precaution, he led his five men out to the riverbank and dunked them and himself in the icy water as a precaution against the fireflasks. He had his doubts whether it would be as effective against Alchemist's Fire as it had been on the night of the recruitment event, when a part of Lady Jamandi's mansion had been set alight by the assassins from Pitax. However, lacking the appropriate scrolls and potions, this was the best he could come up with. Soon, a half-frozen team of six, teeth chattering not from fear but from the cold, marched out against the goblins at a quick pace to generate some extra body heat.

  This was one of his most successful battles, thanks to the baroness and her team entering the fray from the north and helping him push back the attackers. Luckily, this time the fireflasks were aimed at the newcomers, who, in turn, were well-prepared with protective spells. Ten goblins remained dead on the battlefield, in addition to Fil and Cian. And an eleventh one was shrewd enough to take refuge behind Guelder's back, making it impossible for Kesten to reach it with his sword. The baroness soon got fed up with his attempts to flush the little vermin from its hiding-place.

  "Kesten? Are you all right? Report!"

  Kesten snapped to attention, as much as it was possible with his sword out.

  "Yes, ma'am! Would you mind getting out of my way or disposing of that goblin yourself, before it stabs you in the back?"

  Guelder's beastly eyes gave him a flat stare. Her pupils were vertical slits, indicating her annoyance.

  "He is with me, Kesten. You might have missed him fighting by my side ever since we arrived. His name is Nok-Nok. The tribe expelled him for his rebellious attitude towards their king and shaman, and I have been making good use of his knowledge of the enemy ever since."

  Kesten frowned. A semi-sentient follower of Lamashtu in Guelder's entourage. Why was he not surprised?

  "You hired a goblin."

  "I asked for a report, not an opinion," she said, so coldly that Kesten's soaked underwear felt pleasantly warm in comparison.

  "Your Grace, we have yet to break through the goblins' defences. Three of their human prisoners have been retrieved from their captivity. Their accounts are worrisome, to say the least. The goblins have been force-feeding them tainted river water, using them as living monster hatcheries. As yet, they don't show any symptoms, but based on the amount of water they have been made to consume, they are almost certainly infected. I intend to send them to the capital for treatment, but at the moment I cannot spare any men to row them there by boat."

  "That will not be necessary. Ferry them to Shambling Step and free up some space in the barracks to set up an operation theatre and a recovery room. Tristian will do the surgery on the prisoners already freed and any others we may rescue. I shall infiltrate the fort with the rest of my team to dispose of the threat and gain as much intel as I can. Keep an eye out for any goblin trying to escape, but your top priority is to secure the ferry on this side and the barracks in Shambling Steps. Obviously, that includes annihilating any monster that may hatch."

  At this point, Hazel, who was exploiting the change in Guelder's personality to insinuate themself even further in her favour, grabbed Guelder's arm, took her aside, and started to explain something to her at great length in Elven. Kesten didn't speak foreign languages, but Linzi apparently did, because her face grew increasingly pale, highlighting the ink smudge on her chin, and her eyes widened in horror. What was going on?

  Whatever Hazel was suggesting, Guelder apparently wanted to have none of it. In another setting, it would have been hilarious to listen to their heated conversation in their lilting language, throwing an unjustifiable amount of vowels at each other's head, but now it only stoked the fire of Kesten's displeasure with his superior. Common was Guelder's third or fourth language. How could anyone trust a ruler who discussed vital matters with her closest confidants in another tongue, excluding the majority of stakeholders? Anyway, Kesten quit eavesdropping on them in vain, and changed into a dry set of clothes. This day was unpleasant enough without freezing into one's underwear.

  As the sun inched towards the horizon, Tristian and his three patients took the ferry to Shambling Steps, while Guelder and her team finally disappeared behind the malodorous walls of the goblin fort. If the captives' accounts were anything to go by, it would be a challenge to navigate the traps and archers and alchemists, especially without a dedicated healer or a good stash of healing potions (she'd sent those across the river with the cleric). There was no guarantee for her to make it out unscathed, or at all. And if Kesten lost face by getting defeated by the little green things, then so would Guelder. Suicide by goblins was far from being the most glorious way to die.

  Kesten deployed a line of archers around the accessible part of the fort's walls to take down any fleeing goblin, and kept his remaining men around the perimeter, watching out for further captives breaking free. And there were quite a lot of them. About a dozen. Kesten embarked them on the ferry, three at a time, and sent them across the Gudrin. Tristian would be as busy as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking competition.

  Soon enough, Kesten found himself just as busy.